Three state-of-the-art pod designs are known for use in Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) aircrafts. In the first design, a traditional A-Kit design houses sensors and communication equipment inside the fuselage with apertures (antennas/optics) penetrating the skin of the aircraft. This approach is a very cumbersome method that requires extensive aircraft modification that reduces the ability of the aircraft to respond to different mission requirements, due to the expense and time required to replace sensors. The second and third designs are; the sidecar approach (i.e., Saturn Arch aircraft sidecars from Dynamic Aviations) and bottom pods approach, respectively.
In the sidecar approach, pods are positioned on the left and right sides of the fuselage, but the left-side pods and the right-side pods are not connected to each other, i.e., they are isolated. The side-car pods are also generally installed at a higher elevation along the sides of the fuselage with connections to the aircraft provided through the windows. In this approach, the bottom surfaces of the pods are positioned higher than a horizontal plane intersecting the bottom surface of the fuselage.
In the bottom pod approach, pods are positioned directly below the fuselage and do not extend along sides of the fuselage. The width of the bottom pod is not greater than the largest width of a portion of the fuselage positioned above the bottom pod. Since there are no side pods associated with the bottom pod approach, storage within the bottom pod must be maximized. In order to provide maximum storage space within the bottom pod, the height of the bottom pod is made to be as close to the ground as possible. Having a pod extend below the fuselage to this degree detrimentally affects safe ground clearance and the clearance space available for downward extension of equipment such as sensors, etc.
The sidecar and bottom pod approaches have restrictions on removal and replacement, field-of-view issues, and structural integrity issues in order to support apertures and other sensors and equipment.
Today's environment is focused on wrapping aircraft around sensors. The complexity, cost and schedule to bring in new capabilities and missions are prohibitive. The cost of maintaining single purpose aircraft in a rapidly changing environment is unsustainable. The changing and evolving threats require a system that can rapidly evolve in hours instead of weeks, months, and years.
Thus, it is desirable to provide a near belly-tangent ISR pod system (Quick Pod system or Q-Pod system) for an aircraft which is able to overcome the above disadvantages.